


Repair Work

by extryn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: BAMF Yasmin Khan, Dubious Morality, Episode Tag, F/F, Friendship/Love, Genocide Who, Minor God Complex, Post-Episode: s11e10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, Time Lord Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 16:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20066974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: Yasmin asks the Doctor some hard questions.





	Repair Work

**Author's Note:**

> Ooops. Wrote 95% of this about two days after the episode aired in 2018. Realised I'd never finished the ending, and had to rectify that!
> 
> Anyway, have Yaz interrogating the Doctor about whether she would *really* have let Earth be destroyed for the sake of the Ux. And being head-over-heels for her. (Aren't we all?)

Something had changed, with Graham and Ryan. Part of it was the anger, the bitterness that had lifted from them like a weight Yaz hadn’t realised she was carrying, too. Underneath it lay something she barely understood; something uglier and more honest than grief.

She needed to know what happened with those hostages, with Tim-Shaw. And the duty of that loomed over her like the Shrine of the Ux and the pounding headache it had left her with.

Besides, there was something else on Yaz’s mind. She kept thinking about it; couldn’t stop reliving it even as it tightened the knot in her stomach. Over and over.

So here she was; at the TARDIS console, fingers clutching at the cuffs of her jacket, slinking up to the Doctor where she stood elbow-deep in fried circuitry.

Yaz had barely opened her mouth before the Doctor flooded her with a thousand-watt smile.

‘Yaz! Just in time, d’you realise, I was just thinking about how useful an extra pair o’ hands would be – could you imagine that? Me with four hands?’ the Doctor yakked on, and thrust a cable into Yaz’s unexpecting arms. ‘I did promise I’d have you home for Christmas, just need to finish up a few _minor_ repairs—’ and abruptly cut herself off, ducking as the transformer she’d been working on threw a shower of sparks over her head.

That old smile tugged at the corner of Yaz’s mouth, like it couldn’t bring itself to reach her voice. ‘We don’t celebrate Christmas, remember?’

The Doctor looked perplexed for a second, then batted her goggles up her forehead with a scoff. ‘Oh, _stupid_ Doctor! Of course not, Yaz celebrating Christmas? Your Umbreen would give me a right ol’ slap for that. Much better off that way, you wouldn’t believe the Christmases I’ve had. Always seem to get into trouble.’

And at first, Yaz had thought this was just _her_; scatterbrained, mouth as loud and fast as a washing machine with a brick in it, and equally likely to end up in catastrophe. And if she was totally honest? She might have even fallen for it a bit. The Doctor was the sort of person you’d follow to the ends of the Earth.

That was the problem, really.

On some level, she had to know. Why else would you talk and talk if you weren’t afraid of being caught out by the silence?

‘Doctor,’ Yaz began, because she knew by now that you’d wait and wait for the Doctor to start a conversation, and you might go your whole life before she ever did. ‘When we were in that room.’

And the Doctor _smiled_. Diminutive and sad, but a smile, and it swelled Yaz’s heart in her chest just the same. She put down her tools, pulled her goggles off her head. Her hair was a messy, sweat-stiff halo about her face. The Doctor’s hands found Yaz’s shoulders, firm and cool as stone. ‘I’m sorry, Yaz. Really, I’m sorry. I should never have asked you to do that.’

Yaz shook her head, but couldn’t bring herself to shrug off the touch as well. ‘No, Doctor, I don’t need you to apologise. It’s not that. It’s—’ she started, except the words were harder to bite out now she actually had to _say _them, ‘I just need to know. The Ux. If there was no other way, would you have – would you have done it.’

The Doctor put her hands away.

‘But there was a way, Yaz,’ she said, those green-gold eyes shining in the TARDIS’s glow, her face so open and full of love that you _wanted_ to believe her. You had to believe her. ‘There’s always a way.’

Yaz bit her lip and tried not to nod, and smile, and just embrace the woman who’d changed her forever and forget all of this. ‘But if there wasn’t, Doctor. Say there was no other way.’

‘Is that what you think it’s about?’ the Doctor said, gesturing aimlessly and settling for fists aborted mid-clench in the space between them, like she could grasp the right words out of the air. ‘One life for another, jus’ numbers on a page?’ And as angry as her voice sounded, her face was begging for Yaz to listen, to _see_, and Yaz wanted nothing more, but—

‘Of course not,’ Yaz snapped, ‘D’you think I’d say something like that, after all this? I just don’t understand it, that’s all. I mean, you’d sacrifice yourself so Hanne could have her dad back, or let that pilot die for us on the hospital ship. But you were gonna watch our whole planet be_ destroyed _just to stop two deaths?’

The Doctor’s face hardened, but Yaz thought she might be wrong - that wasn’t anger. She looked _tired_. Sad. Neither of those words seemed to work but maybe there just weren’t any, not for the Doctor. ‘Your planet,’ she said. ‘Not mine.’

Or maybe it was anger. Because that’s what people did, when they were scared; lashed out. And hearing those words from the Doctor’s mouth burnt like the touch of a hot stove she’d been stupid enough to grab.

Love was a funny thing. Right when it was strongest, in the beginning, you hardly knew who someone was. You filled in all those gaps with who you hoped they’d be, with all your expectations. And then they let you down, and you realise you hadn’t fallen in love with that person at all. You loved your fantasy of them. Just a wish.

Yaz stared her down. ‘My planet, and you said you’d protect it, you _swore_ in front of us. All of us,’ she remembered, and there was more she needed to say, more she was realising she didn’t know about the Doctor. ‘You told us – you told us _never_ to use guns. But if you’d killed Tim-Shaw, none of this would have happened. Earth would never have been in danger.’

She didn’t say what was stuck behind her lips. Didn’t think her name needed to be said. It was there, between the four of them, like it had been all along.

‘And y’know what, Yaz?’ the Doctor murmured. ‘That’s what Tim-Shaw said. An’ he’s right.’

It wasn’t what Yaz had expected to hear. Like she’d had any idea what she’d expected in the first place - but it hadn’t been that. Unable to look her in the eye, Yaz laid a hand on the console. Warm, faintly buzzing under her hand. Safe. ‘Yeah?’

‘You know how old I am?’ the Doctor asked, counting on a spare hand. ‘Two thousand-and-something, ‘less you count a bit of an accident with a Confession Dial – give or take a few billion years.’

Yaz laughed a little, sure there was supposed to be a punchline and without a clue what it was.

‘I mean it,’ she said, eyebrows raised. ‘I’ve been alive so long I can’t even remember all of it.’

It was almost enough to make her drop the whole conversation_. What?_ Not that it was any more impossible than_ any_ of this, but – how did she look so _young?_ Was she immortal? Was that how she survived falling through the train? How did she keep from running into herself, all those places and times?

Except one question made itself clearer than the rest. ‘Have you ever killed someone?’

She swallowed. Yaz could see it, the visible effort it took to look her in the eyes. To hold Yaz’s gaze as she said it. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I have.’

‘More than once?’ Yaz asked, and she nodded, lips pressed into a thin line. ‘Why?’

The Doctor opened her mouth, paused, closed it again. Opened it once more. ‘Because I had to. Because there was no other way, or I couldn’t stop them, or I didn’t realise before it was too late. Sometimes, because I thought they deserved it.’

Yaz’s heart felt like it had shrivelled up in her chest.

‘I carry that with me, Yaz,’ she said, staring into the heart of the TARDIS’s console. ‘Every day. All the people who died because I should have had more mercy, _tried harder_. ‘Cept then I think about the times people died because I had too much.’

She wanted to lay a hand over the Doctor’s – tell her it was alright. That she trusted her. But she had to know. ‘Then why were you so afraid of Graham killing Tim-Shaw?’

The Doctor looked at her, grim. Said nothing.

_Oh._

‘Once,’ she said, her lips stretched anxiously across her jaw, ‘I sacrificed a whole planet to save the Universe. All of creation. My home planet.’

Yaz didn't know what you were supposed to say to that. ‘What happened?’

And for a terrible moment, the Doctor said nothing. Just grappling with the quiet. ‘I regretted it for the rest of my life, and it destroyed me, and it nearly destroyed everything I cared about.’

‘You don’t look very destroyed to me.' She tried not to make it sound like a question.

The Doctor laughed. Full of wonder, and bitter just the same. ‘I got a second chance. I’ll probably never have another one like it.’

Well, Yaz had gotten what she’d wanted, hadn’t she? She’d gone too far, asked for too much, and now she felt like an idiot, and that was that. ‘I’m so sorry. I should never have said anything, I just…’

And she hoped the Doctor would take the out, would let this go before Yaz did any more damage. But she didn’t. She had a habit of that; surprising Yaz at the strangest times. Instead she just smiled, all light and hope like it’d never left her. ‘You’re human, Yasmin Khan. That’s what’s so important about you. You and Graham and Ryan, you’re always there holding the second chances. Sometimes I just need to be reminded to look.’

‘There’s always a way,’ Yaz murmured.

The Doctor pulled her in close; lean muscle and soft curves and cool skin under her clothes. It was the sort of hug that made Yaz feel like something was being filled inside of her rather than squeezed out. She tucked Yaz into her shoulder, squeezing her fiercely. ‘There’s always a way.’

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing Thirteen - and I've got to confess that while I had the dialogue sorted for the final 250 words or so, I couldn't figure out the words that were supposed to go between it. I'd really love some feedback on how you think it read, and whether anything snagged at you when you were reading!


End file.
